Richard Whittall:

The Globalist's Top Ten Books in 2016: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Middle East Eye: "

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is one of the weightiest, most revelatory, original and important books written about sport"

“The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer has helped me immensely with great information and perspective.”

Bob Bradley, former US and Egyptian national coach: "James Dorsey’s The Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer (has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture."

Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

Play the Game: "Your expertise is clearly superior when it comes to Middle Eastern soccer."

Andrew Das, The New York Times soccer blog Goal: "No one is better at this kind of work than James Dorsey"

David Zirin, Sports Illustrated: "Essential Reading"

Change FIFA: "A fantastic new blog'

Richard Whitall of A More Splendid Life:

"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

Sunday, August 6, 2017

Gulf media wars produce losers, no winners (Corrected version)

This report has been corrected to say that the ArabNews/YouGov poll report is currently embedded in a Arab News story, and according to Arab News, will be published on Monday on the YouGov website.

Feuding Gulf states that have pumped millions of dollars
into public diplomacy appear to have done better in damaging the reputations of
their detractors than in polishing their own tarnished images.

Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, all appear
to fare poorly in how they are perceived, judged by a recent survey of American
public opinion. The international community’s response to the two-month-old
Gulf crisis suggests, however, that Qatar so far has been more successful in
garnering muted support for its call for direct talks to solve the crisis – a
position rejected by its detractors.

In the only survey to date
of public perceptions in the United States of the Gulf crisis by Britain’s
YouGov on behalf of Saudi Arabia’s foremost English-language daily, Arab News,
Qatar faired poorest in its approval rating, but Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates, the instigators of a diplomatic and economic boycott of the
idiosyncratic Gulf state did not do much better.

Poll results showed that a mere 27 percent of the 2,263
people queried considered Qatar a friend or ally of the United States compared
to Saudi Arabia with 37 and the UAE with 39 percent. Thirty-one percent
identified Qatar as unfriendly or an enemy of the US. Only 16 percent of those
polled associated Qatar with its hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup while 34
percent linked Qatar to being accused of supporting terrorism and 44 percent
believed that Qatar’s state-owned, controversial Al Jazeera television network
provided a platform for militant and jihadist groups.

Arab News reported extensively on the poll and included the full report in one of those stories. The report was
also scheduled to be accessible on Monday on YouGov’s
website. The Arab News reporting was the latest salvo in a public
relations war waged by state-owned or privately-owned media on both sides of
the Gulf divide that operate in an environment of highly restricted freedom of
the press and often have close ties to government and/or ruling families.

The Financial
Times quoted Saudi journalists as saying that they had been pressured by
government to criticise Qatar. One Saudi editor described to the FT how
officials have been using a mobile phone messaging group to instruct
journalists on how to shape coverage and what stories to focus on. “These are orders,
not suggestions,” the editor said.

Focusing exclusively on the poll’s Qatar-related results, Arab News editor-in-chief
Faisal J. Abbas expressed “surprise” at “how quickly the diplomatic row has
negatively affected ‘Brand Qatar,’ at least in the US… It was interesting to
see that despite the billions spent by Qatar on various soft power initiatives
— from education to charity to international sport — the study found that more
Americans associate it with supporting terror than anything else, “ Mr. Abbas
wrote.

Mr. Abbas made no reference to the fact that like Qatar,
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have deployed huge sums to hire a battery of US public
relations and lobbying firms in a bid to garner support for their positions.
Nor did he discuss what return on investment they have had.

Striking a slightly more cautionary note in one of several commentaries
on the YouGov poll published by Arab News, Sir John Jenkins, a former British
ambassador to the kingdom, noted that “Saudi Arabia has ground to make up here,
which is an important policy point for decision-makers in Riyadh: Reputation
matters in the modern world and you do not improve that without a smart,
targeted and sustained communications strategy.”

Last month, a random
online YouGov poll suggested that of those asked whose side they were on in
the Gulf crisis, 23 percent opted for Qatar and only nine percent for Saudi
Arabia. Two thirds of the respondents said they did not know enough to choose
sides.

The results of the survey of US public opinion,
notwithstanding, Qatar appeared to be faring better than the poll results
suggested. A majority of Arab and Muslim states have refrained from joining the
UAE-Saudi-led campaign, which is backed by less than a score of African and
Asian nations, who are dependent on the oil-rich Gulf states in financial
and/or political terms.

The international community almost unanimously has refused
to endorse the UAE-Saudi-led alliance’s conditions for resolving the Gulf
crisis. The United States, the European Union, China and Russia have
effectively backed Qatar’s call for direct talks between the Gulf states and
its detractors, a proposal rejected by the alliance.

The alliance’s “problem with (their) display of political
bravado is that nobody else buys it, and they are awkwardly isolated in their
tent woven of threads of bravado. This is mainly because their accusations are wildly
exaggerated, and also hypocritical on core complaints like funding Islamist
movements, having relations with Iran, or interfering in other states’ affairs.
The Saudi-Emirati media propaganda pushing such accusations has been
embarrassing in its ultra-thin doses of truth, and wildly counter-productive,
serving only to further damage the credibility that some GCC media did enjoy in
recent years,” noted prominent
journalist and pundit Rami G. Khouri.

Mr. Khouri argued further that “in the court of global
public opinion, the Qataris appear to be much more sensible, consistent,
focused, and precise, while the Saudi-Emirati-led states seem to express
genuine anger and fear accompanied by unrealistic and unreasonable demands, but
without convincing evidence for their accusations.”

The UAE-Saudi-led alliance has demanded that Qatar shutter
Al Jazeera and other media outlets; reduce its relations with Iran with whom it
shares the world’s largest gas field; expel Turkish troops from the emirate;
and cut ties to militant and Islamist groups irrespective of whether they have
been proscribed by the United Nations or the United States. Qatar has rejected
the demands as an infringement on its sovereignty.

To many, the dispute in the Gulf amounts to the pot blaming
the kettle and twisting the truth to serve rival narratives that fuel their
public relations and media wars. Literally all parties to the dispute are
suspected of having had, at least at some points in time, links to militant
groups. All, apart from Saudi Arabia, maintain often flourishing economic
relations with Iran and many have foreign military bases on their soil.

Said hard-hitting, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald
in an article detailing the Gulf rivals’ investment in Washington public
relations and lobby firms some four years prior to the current Gulf crisis: “The
point here is not that Qatar is innocent of supporting extremists… The point is
that this coordinated media attack on Qatar – using highly paid former U.S.
officials and their media allies – is simply a weapon used by the Emirates,
Israel, the Saudis and others to advance their agendas… What’s misleading isn’t
the claim that Qatar funds extremists but that they do so more than other U.S.
allies in the region… Indeed, some of Qatar’s accusers here do the same to at
least the same extent, and in the case of the Saudis, far more so.”

No comments:

Post a Comment

Sporticos

Ads

Soccer Results

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer does not promote, link to or provide videos from any online sources who distribute illegal streaming content over the Internet with domains registered in the United States of America

Top 100 Soccer Sites

Subscribe To

Subscribe by Email

About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile